Law & Disorder —

Google joins the EU’s Internet Explorer smackdown

Google has applied to participate as a third party in the European Commission' …

Google likes to tout the advantages of self-regulation and the free market when its dominance in search and advertising is called into question, but the Web giant doesn't seem to mind letting the government intervene in the browser market. In an announcement posted today at Google's official public policy blog, Google VP of product management Sundar Pichai says that the company will be participating as a third-party in the European Commission's (EC) ongoing investigation of Internet Explorer.

Opera filed a complaint with the European Commission in 2007 alleging that Microsoft has undermined competition in the browser market by providing its own Internet Explorer Web browser in the dominant Windows operating system. Opera says that its browser never gained mainstream traction because of Microsoft's bundling tactics. The EC concurred with Opera in a statement that it issued in January which accused Microsoft of damaging browser innovation. In a follow-up statement that was issued this week, the EC says that Microsoft will face hefty fines and could be forced to provide other browser options in Windows that the user can select when installing Windows or ordering computers.

Mozilla announced earlier this month that it would be participating in the investigation and offering its assistance to the EC. Mozilla chairperson Mitchell Baker argued that the success of Firefox does not constitute productive competition and that the lack of successful commercial browser offerings reflects an unhealthy market ecosystem.

Google is now applying with the EC to participate in the proceeding in the same capacity as Mozilla. Pichai argues that the browser market today is still highly uncompetitive and that the advancement of emerging Web technologies could be significantly accelerated by imposing some constraints on Microsoft's bundling. He acknowledges, however, that finding an effective remedy will be difficult and that the process comes with risks.

"Google believes that the browser market is still largely uncompetitive, which holds back innovation for users. This is because Internet Explorer is tied to Microsoft's dominant computer operating system, giving it an unfair advantage over other browsers," he wrote in the blog entry. "We learned a lot from launching our own Google Chrome browser last year and are hoping that Google's perspective will be useful as the European Commission evaluates remedies to improve the user experience and offer consumers real choices. Of course creating a remedy that helps solve one problem without creating other unintended consequences isn't easy—but the more voices there are in the conversation the greater the chances of success."

Although the numerous deficiencies of Internet Explorer are well documented and Microsoft's historical resistance to compliance with open standards has created many challenges for Web developers, the browser market today is highly competitive and richly innovative. Mozilla has achieved significant traction in Europe and already has nearly half of the browser market in several countries.

It's also highly questionable whether bundling is still a truly relevant factor. Indeed, the fact that Google's brand new Chrome browser has already exceeded the marketshare of Opera seems to demonstrate that Opera's woes aren't entirely Microsoft's fault. In a recent interview with PC Pro, Mozilla's Mike Conner, one of the chief Firefox engineers, argued that Opera's claims that bundling harms competition are "provably false" and suggested that Opera's desktop browser is unpopular because it is too complex and distracting.

The EC has a poor track record with respect to Microsoft unbundling remedies. When the government body forced Microsoft to produce a version of Windows XP without Windows Media player, it was universally shunned and OEMs largely refused to ship it on hardware. The EC appears to be heading in a different direction this time, but it's unclear if it will have any impact on browser choice in the European market, where Firefox has already gained mainstream acceptance.

Originally posted by Bankie vs. Bankie:I think it's unneccessary to force IE out of windows all together, but IE shouldn't be required to operate or maintain the OS. I should be able to download updates to a Windows machine through whatever browser I choose.

You don't even have to use a browser to download Windows updates.

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The wim filter tools like NLite and VLite rely on should be made publicly available (apart from the 1.x GB package it's currently distributed with) and that, I think, would solve the problem, for me.

No they fucking shouldn't. Testing against an ever-shifting base is nigh impossible.

Originally posted by Huskyr:Sure! Everyone knows how to start up a Terminal (sorry, 'Command Prompt' for Windows users) and use FTP to download the latest copy of a random browser, right? It'll be just like in the good old days!

So this theoretic scenario has a user that managed to procure operating system installation media, then install his operating system from scratch and now can't install a browser?

Because I think people that don't know how to do that, or do not feel comfortable following simple instructions get their machines from OEMs that will have already installed "a browser" for them.

"a browser" being the key here, since if Internet Explorer already has to be installed then even if their preference is for another that'd mean having to support 2 browsers instead of 1. Hence the bundling of IE being bad.

If you're really worried about it from the standpoint of a web developer there has been a solution to this problem since the early 90's.

And so ironic to consider that even at a time prior to the existence of IE, and of course thereafter, that Netscape's browsers were down-loadable free from the Netscape site, available for purchase at every neighborhood software store, and came free and bundled with pretty much every OEM computer made as well as a plethora of other devices like printers, hard drives, and modems. Too bad that Netscape is no more, else the EUC and its commission-paid lawyers would have yet another bundled cash cow to plunder.

Originally posted by Temple:All MS needs to do is install Mozilla, Opera, Chrome along with IE. And when the user runs Windows for the first time s/he picks whatever browser they want to use. Problem solved.

Even better- Microsoft should just include Lynx as their designated non-IE browser, and let users decide. (Afterall, Lynx is faster on older hardware )

quote: Originally posted by nevali: The fact that Firefox has the level of popularity that it has despite this is itself impressive.

Given the full page ads and all the attention from mainstream media falling over themselves to appear 'in the know' by promoting an OSS browser helped, no doubt. FF is where it is, because of the heavy, often free, promotion. Chrome got the same benefit thanks to being a spawn of Google. Haven't seen much attention spent on a small company from Sweden though.

My car came 'bundled' with tires, should Ford be sued to 'unbundle' the tires?

My breakfast ceral came 'bundled' with whole grain. Should Kelloggs be sued to 'unbundle' the whole grain?

The point is, a Microsoft product is like any other product, buy it or use it or don't buy it or use it.

How is there a 'browser market' anyway when netscape, firefox, opera, and all the others give their browsers away for free? I'll bet that if all the others started charging for their browsers you'd see a lot more simply not use them and stick with the IE already in their windows operating system. As it is right now, they give them away for free, so just how is this anti-competitive or anything else to have IE bundled in the operating system when there is really no 'market' to compete with? How can you say that there is some sort of anti-competitive thing with Microsoft when there is nothing to compete with? I could understand if the others charged for their browsers, then there might be something there, but there isn't right now.

And this statement by Mitchell Baker in the article; "Mozilla chairperson Mitchell Baker argued that the success of Firefox does not constitute productive competition and that the lack of successful commercial browser offerings reflects an unhealthy market ecosystem."

THERE IS NO FRIGGIN MARKET! You can not have a competitive market if there is nothing to be profited from it. Firefox is free you idiot! If there is any "unhealthy market ecosystem" its bacause you and the others made it that way by introducing free products into a profit market then want to use the work of others to push your free product so you can make a buck so you will not need to lay out the cash to build your own platform. We all know the reason why you and the rest of the free browser people want a share of MS's pie and why you give your browsers away for free...its because you want to control the advertising and what people see with your browsers so you can make a buck and you need the Windows operating system to do this because its what most of the world uses at some point or another. I think maybe the question should be asked "If there was a Firefox operating system, or a Google Chrome operating system, or an Opera operating system, or any of the other free browser producers had their own operating system, would they then allow MS to include IE in their operating systems?" I tend to think the answer would be a very loud and definate 'No!". Do you complain that Linux might have its own browser? No you don't, and why is that? Its because Linux does not have the market penetration that Windows does and it would not be worth your time to spend the money to battle a 'bundled' browser in Linux because the numbers just are not there for enough of a profit for you. You talk about an "unhealthy market ecosystem" yet you ignore the fact that MS marketed a product just like anyone else is free to do, even you, and they because very sucessful, if anything they actually established and aid a healthy market ecosystem by following the basic rules of any free enterprise system involving supply and demand. Now your upset because you see a ton of opportunities to make a buck from advertising but don't have a platform for your free browser and want to take advantage of the work and development and marketing that MS has put into their product but they won't let you. So basically your that guy who sets back and lets someone else do all the work then wants to step in and capitalize on it some way when its all done then complain about it when you don't get your way and don't want to do your own work to market your product.

Originally posted by ttoastt:I may be missing something, but how would one get online without something pre-installed? I'm not talking about PCs bought from OEMs, but if someone just buys Windows off the shelf and installs it. Is there some other mystical way of jumping online without a browser?

A splash screen at initial login with the choice to download/install whatever browser you want, it would make the HTTP calls and download and install the browser(s) you selected (or even during the installation of Windows, gee make the installation of Windows more like a linux install where the end user can select what features to download/install.. but we are dreaming now). It wouldn't be that hard to program and make a lot of more sense than trying to bundle them into the OS or let OEMs decide what to bundle

If you bundle them, than most people are going to think that MS is the support owner for such software.

Originally posted by Bankie vs. Bankie:I think it's unneccessary to force IE out of windows all together, but IE shouldn't be required to operate or maintain the OS. I should be able to download updates to a Windows machine through whatever browser I choose.

You can, and always have been able to. Every publicly released patch is downloadable from Microsoft's site, individually. If you're complaining about Windows Update, it's been unbundled from IE since the launch of Vista.

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Originally posted by Bankie vs. Bankie:The wim filter tools like NLite and VLite rely on should be made publicly available (apart from the 1.x GB package it's currently distributed with) and that, I think, would solve the problem, for me.

It is already freely available to the public; just because you don't want to download the entire WAIK package doesn't mean that Microsoft needs to cater to your specific demands. Just download it, pull out the part you want, and delete the rest; it's not hard. Also, only vLite relies upon the WIM filter.

Originally posted by Ryan B.:As a web developer, I want IE to wither and die. I want people to stop using it so we can all pretend it doesn't exist, the way so many of us currently ignore Opera. But, I don't think the way to achieve that is strong-arming Microsoft into unbundling it. People will change when we, the web developers, give them a concrete reason to. If we all band together and decide to shun IE, refusing to make our sites compatible with it and then telling people why things don't work, then we'll see people installing alternative browsers in order to make the Internet work again.

Sadly, with money on the line I doubt many businesses would have the huevos to ever allow such to happen on their sites.

Originally posted by wangstramedeous:Essentially if ever any new feature came to Windows that came under strong competition, you could argue that Microsoft strip it out so as to create a level playing field (see media players).

Nope, IE is being targeted because you were limited to using IE to view massive part of teh web. If you wanted to listen to MP3s or Ogg Vorbis or whatever, you could install any player you wanted. MS leveraged the popularity of it's OS and a broken web "standard" implementation to ensure using other browsers was difficult at best, and impossible at worst. The doesn't apply to any other component of Windows.

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Once Google deploys its own OS, is it going to be forced to not include Chrome as well?

Only if gOS is big enough to leverage a broken standards implementation via Chrome. Since Chrome sticks to standards pretty good, and gOS isn't going to replace Windows soon (unless it can run Windows apps), it's not a likely scenario.

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Why does this not apply to Apple?

Because half a dozen users isn't enough to alter the web ecosystem.

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One would argue its because they have a low market share. So what what % (arbitrarily set by a court) would they have to comply to similar restrictions? 40%? 50%?

It's not just marketshare, it's abused marketshare. I don't use Safari, but from what I understand there are no Safari-only websites.

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Addition:And I'm increasingly getting tired of Google resorting to such tactics to confront its main competitor.

I'm increasingly getting tired of having to repeat the same arguements. Anti-competitive behaviour is anti-competitive behaviour. People that try to diminish the arguement to simple marketshare percentages are either missing the point completely, or lowering the standard of discussion to suit their agenda.

Originally posted by Temple:All MS needs to do is install Mozilla, Opera, Chrome along with IE. And when the user runs Windows for the first time s/he picks whatever browser they want to use. Problem solved.

What about Seamonkey? What about Maxthon? What about Safari?

What about the next decent browser to try to compete with the established players?

Originally posted by TheWerewolf:"Although the numerous deficiencies of Internet Explorer are well documented..." Define "deficiencies"? My car doesn't fly. I consider that a deficiency, but I'm willing to bet most people who drive cars don't.

Can other cars fly? If so then your car has a deficiency.

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My job doesn't pay me a billion a year - I REALLY consider that a deficiency - but again, not many others (especially my boss) would agree.

Do other people employed in an equivalent position get paid a billion a year? Then your job has a pay deficiency.

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The problem with the 'IE sucks' argument is that it starts with assumptions about what the general user population *must* like or dislike - but once you dig in a bit, you realise that it's more about the person complaining than the general public.

Don't get me started on the general public. Big Brother sucks, and so does Idol - they rate through the roof, though. People that watch that stuff deserve to use IE.

But this is where you gloss over the real issue:

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I've learned a lot about how real people use computers and what they expect from computers by watching my father. Speed of rendering. Yes, desirable, but most people aren't obsessed with this. Compatibility? Most of the sites they go to are coded for IE - so no problem. Stability? A problem, but again, not SO unstable that it's enough a problem for most people. Security? IE7 + any good antivirus pretty much covers this one.

Emphasis mine. The fact that "most of the sites they go to" are coded for IE is the problem. It makes things messy when I use Seamonkey or Firefox. And some sites won't let me enter of login if I don't use IE. That's anti-competitive. That's why MS are being forced to remove IE or bundle other browsers. No site should assume or demand IE. You can't force everyone around the world to code their sites properly, all you can do it make sure IE can't be assumed to be available, and thus they have to write better sites.

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There's a bigger issue though and a lot of the 'experts' miss it. IE is just a thin shell over a collection of Windows services and components. That's why in .Net you can build your own browser from scratch in three parts and almost no code. You can also do it with ActiveX.

That's not being "missed". That's irellevent.

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If you want to 'unbundle' the browser - does that mean removing the components too?

No.

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Then what about the third party apps that use them?

They're fine. Nothing's missing.

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We've been down this road: Bluetooth.

<snip lots of bluetooth whinge>

That's all irelevent to the issue at hand. Just because OEMs bundled their own inferior bluetooth setup doesn't mean you can't go get your own. Nothing required MS's bluetooth implementation. Most of the web used to require IE (and too much still does). This is about abusing one monopoly to gain in a separate market. That applies to IE, not to bluetooth. It a red herring.

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From Microsoft's perspective, this is a lose-lose game. Remember, they're fighting a perception war with Linux and MacOS... both of which come bundled to the eyeballs with stuff. If they don't bundle, they lose the perception and the user satisfaction war... if the do bundle, they get the EU and their competition on their tail.

No, Windows is the only OS "bundling" support for Blueray playback. MacOS and Linux can't do that (out of the box). It has nothing to do with bundling, it all about abuse of position. Anyone can pay and support Blueray playback. Not everyone could view IE only websites. Don't muddy the water by pretending it's bundling or marketshare we're talking about. Those are the methods used to abuse their position, not the abuse itself.

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The argument that other browers are too hard to install is surreal.

No one says it's hard, just that (for the most part) it won't happen.

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How hard it is to double click an installer? I have Firefox and IE on several machines and it's not exactly difficult to do. Sorry - I call red herring on this one.

It's not hard to double click an installer. Don't play dumb. Where does the user get the installer? Which installer should he use? He doesn't like the sound of Opera, too poofy. Firefox? I haven't played that game, but I liked the movie. Internet Explorer? Yeah, that's what I want to do. MS aren't stupid, those boring names are there for a reason.

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All the arguments about monopoly - strongarming and the rest fall apart with two specific examples:

<snip non-analogous examples>

I don't use Linux, I can see why they have a much higher return rate than Windows machines. But I can use OpenOffice.org on Windows, I can use Seamonkey or Winamp or Fubar2000. I can't use Firefox to view certain websites. Once IE is not guaranteed to be available, the web ecosystem will improve.

Originally posted by Dark Empath:I don't use Linux, I can see why they have a much higher return rate than Windows machines.

[offtopic]The truth is that MSI netbooks have a much higher return rate. Funny how the shills are quick to accept that number and ignore the claims of ASUS, and now Dell, that return rates are the same, nevermind the double-digit share of Linux sales.[/offtopic]

Why does everyone seem to ignore the fact that IE is moving to be completely standard compliant? If it were a real monopoly, why would they bother? Has not the market forces already taken effect and spurred development from all competitors? Arguing that IE enables lazy web developers seems moot at this point when IE is moving to be MORE standard compliant than Firefox, it's nearest competitor. I don't how many websites remain IE only, but I haven't seen any recently. I use Firefox almost exclusively and use IE/Chrome when I want to check multiple gmail accounts at once. And since windows update has been completely separated from IE, there's no issue there.

I honestly don't see how big a deal leaving IE on the system is. In the era of 2+ gigs of default RAM and TB sized harddrive, IE's resource consumption is hardly an issue. For those complaining about IE opening up from other applications, maybe they called IE specifically for a reason? I develop websites in Visual Studio and when I run it, it opens my default browser (firefox). I wouldn't blame your sitings of IE on MS when MS's own development studio opens the proper default browser. Any complaint about malware opening IE is moot, since if you're not using IE and you still got malware...well, that says a lot about your security practices and the vulnerabilities of whatever you are using.

Originally posted by Marc12345:Before we discuss what Microsoft needs to do, can someone explain what competitive advantage Microsoft has by pushing IE?

You need to distinguish HAS from HAD. Before IE had completely dominated the market, the competitive advantage was in locking people into the Windows ecosystem and not consider alternative software stacks (Netscape ne Mozilla ne Firefox).

Now, there is no competitive advantage because they are on 80%+; pushing IE is merely to maintain dominance.

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Are we hurt by using IE?

Um, yes. Have you not noticed how every other browser is more standards compliant, faster, and more resiliant?

It's like saying "My old car works fine, I don't need a new car that is safer, gets better mileage, is more comfortable, blah, blah, blah".

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Do we pay more money? Obviously not if you can quite easily switch to another browser. My view is that Microsoft would be OK with shipping Firefox with Windows if it could be guaranteed that Firefox would not be used to grab power.

Huh, fancy that. You nailed it; IE was a power grab to deny power to another company.

In other words, Firefox is competition, and Microsoft's actions of denying Compaq Windows licenses in order to unbundle Netscape (now Firefox) was anti-competitive.

[/quote]But nobody can guarantee this. As soon as another company grabs Microsoft's power it will misuse it. Look at IBM. They are (or were) notorious for misusing their power. Look at Sun. As soon as Java got some traction it started to ask money for it. Thank God they failed. I think Microsoft's abuses are pretty mild.[/quote]

You're confused and messed up. Maybe a little sick too.

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And don't believe Google is all good. You think the websites that are the most suitable show up on top of their results list? Naive. You can pay them to put your site on top. Talking about abuse of power.

No you can't. You can only pay them to make you're AD on top, you can't pay them to put your site highest in the search rank.

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And then there is Apple. You buy music and you can only play it on their hardware. Abuse of power.

Now we know you're ignorant.

Their music is mostly DRM free mpeg4 complaint audio. You buy music and it plays everywhere (every PC, every Zune, every iPod, and any MP4 player). You know, MP4, logical successor to MP3?

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Remember the nineties when Netscape was expected widely to take over the role of Microsoft? It would make Windows obsolete! Obviously Microsoft defended its business. Nothing wrong about that. Every other company would do the same.

Actually, there is something wrong about that. We have laws going back a hundred years now (Sherman antitrust law from 1890) that says what they did was illegal.

Microsoft could have COMPETED instead of being anticompetitive. There is a difference.

In case it's still not clear: blackmail is anticompetitive. Making a better browser is competitive.

They blackmailed Compaq into dropping Mozilla/Netscape.

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I am old enough to have lived through the early nineties. Whenever we wanted to sell a software product we had to make a VAX/VMS version, a VAX Ultrix version, a Sun/Unix version, and Apollo Unix version, etc etc etc. Then came Bill Gates and he liberated the software world: we finally had one platform. This was great progress of course: software prices dropped tremendously and many more people found jobs in the software industry.

Now we have again four (five?) different browsers to handle. This is very costly. Am I the only one who sees this? I pray that Microsoft is successful with Silverlight. Then again, we will develop software efficiently for a single platform.

Microsoft is actually the one "bifurcating" the market. There already is a single platform called HTML and it's Microsoft that's doing what you are afraid of... splitting up the platform.

Originally posted by lostkt0:Why does everyone seem to ignore the fact that IE is moving to be completely standard compliant?

I don't think most people are ignoring it, I think they see the move towards compliance and a response to the constant anti-trust accusations and fines and trials etc. Would they be moving towards compliance if they weren't being forced to?

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If it were a real monopoly, why would they bother?

They are a real monopoly, and they're trying to maintain it. People that know anything about their computer have already moved away from IE because MS let it stagnate. MS are trying to maintain the remaining 70% of people.

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Has not the market forces already taken effect and spurred development from all competitors?

Yes and no. I wouldn't say "spurred". Don't forget it's taken 10 years for the competitors to produce a viable alternative. You or I may have been using the Mozilla Suite years ago, but most people didn't change browsers until Firefox matured.

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Arguing that IE enables lazy web developers seems moot at this point when IE is moving to be MORE standard compliant than Firefox, it's nearest competitor. I don't how many websites remain IE only, but I haven't seen any recently.

Maybe I phrased things badly. The ubiquity of IE allows web developers and site owners to remain lazy. Tens of millions of dollars were spent building (IE oriented) websites, and it's going to take a lot of motivation for the maintainers and owners to spend both time and money to "fix" them so any browser can be used. I still get the occasional site telling me I need IE 5 or Netscape 4!

I work in finance, and a depressingly large number of finance companies require IE to perform online trading, account management, asset transfers etc. I'm not talking intranet, I'm talking separate companies (Challenger, ING, Asgard, Aviva, etc) where I login and transact on clients accounts. Most retail sites are now browser agnostic, but not all. And these sites don't require ActiveX or any MS specific technology, they're simply coded to IE to cut corners.

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For those complaining about IE opening up from other applications, maybe they called IE specifically for a reason?

Lazy coders? Bad programming style?

I truly believe the only reason MS has picked up it's game is because it's trying to head-off these lawsuits before they result in MS being harshly penalised. At the risk of sounding like I'm attacking you, their plan has worked on you!

Originally posted by shevaberg:I just find it funny a company with an monoply on search engine is whining about a company that is loosing market share in the browers....

It is nice with a search engine (cough cough adevertising company) with billions in cash complaign about non fair practices

What, you want Google to abuse their search monopoly in order to compete in the browser market?

I think I'm missing where he said that. Please explain?

Not that I agree with him - just because you're successful doesn't mean you can't complain about dodgy behaviour from a competitor. But it's not good to put words in people's mouths. When you feel the need to do that, you're already losing the argument.

And then there is Apple. You buy music and you can only play it on their hardware. Abuse of power.

Now we know you're ignorant.

Their music is mostly DRM free mpeg4 complaint audio. You buy music and it plays everywhere (every PC, every Zune, every iPod, and any MP4 player). You know, MP4, logical successor to MP3?

Ok, I agreed with everything you said in that post except this.

Apple have only just gone to DRM-free, and not all their offerings are DRM-free yet!

He was right about this - Apple abused their position. Apple claimed they couldn't licence fairplay to other companies (thus allowing Zune or Zen owners to buy from iTunes) because it would make fairplay insecure, yet MS was able to licence its DRM with fewer cracks than Apple had for fairplay.

Apple only started removing (and it hasn't removed it all yet) DRM when the big labels allowed Amazon to sell DRM-Free music.

Copyright infringement forced the labels to agree to DRM-free music, Apple wouldn't play ball regarding pricing, the labels made a deal with Amazon, Apple shit itself and caved to the pricing the labels wanted.

Apple is the bad-guy here. And when you don't live in the US (and don't have access to Amazon's DRM-free music) Apple is still forcing DRM upon us.

Apple would be worse than MS if they weren't so crap at business. They fluked the iPod, and without it they wouldn't still be around. The only reason Apple survived long enough to create the iPod was because MS funded them to the tune of $460M back in the 90's. MS need a competitor to show the DoJ.